


It’s (not) Just Hair

by hallelujah99



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: 60 years later, F/F, Far Future, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Cancer, Older Characters, Post-Canon, Sad, long happy life, mentions of Parkinson’s, mentions of possible death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28639968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallelujah99/pseuds/hallelujah99
Summary: A little piece on Shelby’s hair and its meaning (or lack thereof) throughout her long life.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	It’s (not) Just Hair

**Author's Note:**

> You might wanna make sure you take a look at the tags before reading :)

It’s just hair.

When Shelby is tiny, too young to even know her colors, her white-blonde hair is just hair. She learns the word as her mother coos “Shelby, point to your hair! Shelby, where’s your hair? Yes, there’s Shelby’s hair!” She learns tummy and nose and eyes and feet, pointing as her mom asks her to, squealing at a job well done. 

When Shelby is five, her hair is more than just hair, or at least it seems to be. Her mother fusses over it with a curling iron, pulling it tightly, and inserting clips of fake hair into it.  
As the announcer says “Prettiest hair goes to contestant number 16, Shelby Goodkind!” Shelby sticks her hand proudly in the air and it seems that her hair must be something special. 

Her hair feels like more than just hair when she turns 12 and it starts to get frizzy, and her mother tells her she should wake up 30 minutes earlier to straighten it. Four years later, she considers the façade worth it when Becca compliments her straight locks. 

Her hair is definitely more than just hair when she takes an angry scissors to it, screaming out all the pain. It’s a connection to the world back home, the world she doesn’t want to revisit, and she HATES herself for that so badly, she almost wants to turn the blade to some other part of her than her hair. 

When they shave her head, her hair lays in giant knots on the floor, it’s not just hair, and now she knows what it is, a representation of a life she’ll never go back to. And that’ll be okay, because if she could make it this far, she could keep on making it.

Her hair grows back in, and it’s just hair again. She starts highlighting it again, then stops, then tries lowlights. She tries different styles through the years, and it’s always just hair. Toni always loves it, always spinning her around when she gets home from the hairdresser, kissing her and telling her it looks amazing.

It’s just hair, hair that gets pulled by their babies as they learn to use their hands, hair that gets thrown into a messy bun on mornings she has to rush their kids to school early. One day, as they’re relaxing on the couch, their daughter braids her hair in with Toni’s, telling them it looks like butterscotch and chocolate swirled together. And Shelby laughs, because it’s just hair.

And it’s just hair, until one day, it isn’t, again. Toni had just pushed her hair out of the way to kiss her neck, the way she’d done for 60 years, as her hand snaked up her chest, and it was all in a well-established and wonderful routine, until it changes in an instant. Toni’s eyes look up and Shelby knows there’s something wrong as she grabs in the same place she had thousands of times, in a way she’d never grabbed her before. “Do you feel this?” She whispers.

It’s a few weeks later, and hair is not just hair as it collects in Toni’s trembling hands after she holds it back while she vomits. 

Shelby knows she shouldn’t ask a Parkinson’s patient to shave her head, but she couldn’t let anyone else but Toni be the one to shave her head. Those now-unsteady hands held her through everything for her whole and they would be what got her through this. She sits in their dining room, because she needed not to look in a mirror. After the whirring of the clippers finally stops, Toni bends down to wipe her tears and kiss her.

She doesn’t try to tell her it’s just hair, because it isn’t, it’s so much more than just hair, it’s a sickness inside of her and painful treatments that might not work. 

It also is hair though, hair that has been eliminated from a body that has lost smooth elastic skin, a body that has gained so many age spots, a body that never regained a flat stomach after creating the girls who had since made her a grandmother.

Her wife kisses her, and tells her “You’re as beautiful as the day I met you.” And after 60 years Shelby can tell when Toni is lying so she knows that somehow, it must be true. 

“Before or after our plane crashed?” Shelby had to lighten the mood.

“Yes.” Toni replied, the same damn smirk on her face that Shelby had fallen in love with more than half a century before. 

As Toni swept up the hair on the floor, Shelby knew it was just hair. Hair that would hopefully grow back. 

If it didn’t, as much as it pained her to think about, that would be okay. 60 years was not nearly enough with her Toni, nor was the time she’d had with her daughters or grandchildren enough. But she still believed in everlasting life. She and Toni would be together again, without hair, without bodies, with only their souls. 

And hair is just hair.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this the other day and didn’t post it cuz I’m not crazy about it but I figured why not! 
> 
> If you’re someone who is waiting on chapter 2 to moms just wanna have fun, know I’m working on it!!!! 
> 
> Please leave a comment with your thoughts, thank you!


End file.
